Quoting Peter-Waterman1 from the article comment section:
This article barely touches the surface of Microsoft's licencing restrictions on its customers who don't want to use Azure.
1. Putting up SPLA licencing costs (Cloud providers must use SPLA) more than Enterprise licence costs.
2. Preventing Windows BYOL on other Cloud Providers but allowing it on Azure, making their customers have to purchase new Windows licences if they don't want to run on Azure.
3. Preventing Customers from running Office in other Cloud Providers.
4, Changing PaaS SQL licencing so that their customers cant use Passive licencing on secondary nodes, except in Azure
5. Preventing customers from bringing their SQL licences to PaaS Services, other than in Azure.
6. Stopping customers using Terminal Services, except in Azure
7. Charging customers exorbitant fees for supporting the end-of-life software anywhere except in Azure.
8. Stopping Customers using MSDN developer edition copies of Windows etc in any place except Azure
If these allegations are true, Microsoft is being anti-competitive and should be investigated irregardless who filed the complaint them.
I remember reading that Diane Greene, then CEO of GCP ,was keen to buy GitHub, but Sundar didn't see the point of owning it. Sundar's argument was supposedly, owning GitHub wouldn't improve the market share of GCP.
Yes, Google was part of the negotiations to purchase GitHub, but there wasn't full commitment for the alphabet CEO.